


The Lark

by Frankie (Tawny)



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Description of Genital Mutilation, Gen, Graphic :(, Other, Standard Criminal Minds violence, Watch out please the first scene is a little rough, mid s2, this was the dream team tbh it's my fav cm era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-11
Updated: 2018-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-16 20:15:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,036
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13643646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawny/pseuds/Frankie
Summary: The BAU investigates an increasingly disturbed serial killer who suffocates, rapes, and castrates his victims. Spencer makes a devastating discovery, and for a moment, Gideon understandstruemurder motive.





	The Lark

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Amelia Earhart once said, "The most efficient way to do it, is to do it."_

It was hard to see, hard to breathe. A knee was pressed into his chest, his wrists trapped in fists. He was exhausted, not expecting to be attacked in the warmth of his own bedroom. He kicked weakly, feet unable to reach his assailant.

Fighting was never the man's strong suit. Struggling, however, had become almost a high school past time-- he had struggled against a lot of forces much larger than he was, and could squirm out of anything. He'd pulled off feats as small as hiding and waiting out a mandated bath, as trivial as narrowly avoiding having his face dunked into the residue lining a high school urinal, as instinctive as sweet talking a dissociative kidnapper. Evading was a specialty.

"Please-"

Slipping out of the arms of his unarmed assailant would be a piece of cake. The man was only restrained by a set of hands firmly gripping his wrists; If he were zip tied, he could slip out of that, too. There was a practicality in respecting David Blaine.

Turn your wrist. Break through the weakest point of his grip-- in his haste to escape, he ended up punching himself in the chin, but he was free. He twisted, arms extending as far as they could, clawing, finding only pillows to throw and a contour sheet to tug off the corner of his mattress. He flailed in the general direction of his bedside table.

 _"Please,_  you don't have to do this- _Please,_ please, I love you,  _please-_ "

He had learned from several self defense classes how to breathe when you land a strike. He'd learned to use his nails, use his knees. Most people, when faced with an attack, stand still. For most people, that was their death sentence, and so the man had learned to _move._ He'd learned to be more trouble than he was worth.

He was _trying_ to use his nails, but he couldn't reach back without risking ensnarement once more. Desperation was leaking into his voice, a pitiful whimper, bringing him back to stirrup chairs and needles and _a state of panic he did not need to be succumbing to right now._ He needed to _survive_. When he opened his mouth, words (at first) ceased to exist in the absence of a scream.

And then, when the words did come, this man was done pleading.

 _"Get off of me!"_ He was done begging for his life. "Let _go of me!_ Don't  _touch me!"_ He had spent far too, too much time with wide eyes glued to saturated photos on a double-sided dry-erase board to be reduced to nothing more than a bleeding pile of violated organs and a victimology.

And so, like many of his overnight hobbies, fighting suddenly became something Spencer Reid was very good at.

 

* * *

 

TWO WEEKS EARLIER  
11:27 AM  
QUANTICO, VA

  
The BAU had gotten fairly practiced at finishing the sentences of their colleagues. JJ and Hotchner were on a roll this morning, picking up and building on the spitball Jason left hanging in the air. He smiled to himself, a faint ghost of his usual broad, shining, proud beam. That ghost was a near-constant on his face, as far as the team knew, but their current case was offputting. It was hard to smile about camaraderie and teamwork, no matter how well-oiled, when your team was building momentum profiling a serial rapist.

"He'll have to be physically fit," Hotchner reiterated, glancing at the board over his shoulder from his position, perched on a rolling filing cabinet. They weren't ready to present the profile just yet, several details not quite adding up, so they'd sat down to rework the case from square one. When he turned back to his team, he rolled the cabinet backwards a little, feet on planted on the ground. 

"So we know he's athletic and that he's got long fingers-- ah, maybe a pianist, if we're looking for nimble hands that can't sew?"

Reid's words sparked JJ's interest, and she opened her mouth, but Garcia was still on the line, and so she was unintentionally cut off.

_"Actually, guys, check this out. Something about all of this caught my eye, so while you were gabbing, I was typing, and, well, we're both good at what we do."_

"Whatcha got for me, baby girl?"

Jason would never not adore Derek's familiarity with the team. With the family.

_"What made you guys drop the idea that our killer was a swimmer?"_

"We hadn't come to that conclusion at all," Jason stated, brows furrowing. Several eyes turned to him.

_"... Well, uh- Sir, that was my first thought when chlorine was mentioned at the crime scene."_

"The chlorine was used to asphyxiate Hawkes and there was no residue found on the rest of her body," he replied, though he leaned in, his tone prompting Garcia to go on.

_"Well,_ _I crossed our current suspect list with any histories of owning, visiting, or subscribing to a membership with any recreational centers and public pools and got nothing."_

"Then..?"

_"And then I remembered hotels and motels have pools."_

There was a bit of silence, in which the entire team processed such an oversight. Determined to be heard, JJ piped up, leaning in closer to the computer. "So while he may not be a swimmer, he's definitely got access to pool supplies. Penelope, please tell me you've already looked into custodial positions and sports sto-"

_"Done and done."_

"And?" Hotchner prompted, absently rolling forward again, a slow rolling noise that had begun to punctuate the bullpen every fifteen seconds, about fifteen minutes ago.

_"And nothing."_

The whole team groaned.

_"Except a rather large cache of stolen pool maintenance supplies in 2002."_

"That's the year our unsub moved to asphyxiation," Reid breathed, hands falling onto an open folder in his lap, broken rubber band twirling. Never so quickly had morale been lifted. Garcia was an angel, and Morgan wasted no time in telling her as much, leaping to his feet and dragging the white board closer to the cluster of desks they sat at. Finally, Hotch wasn't twisting to study. 

Jason wasn't sure when Penelope had started to really feel like she belonged here. Until recently, he didn't even really know her name. Also until recently, Garcia had referred to everything as _yours_ , meaning the team's. I've got the drop on  _yo_ _ur_ killer, _your_ unsub. The removal of a letter warmed his chest.  _Our_ unsub. He'd have to offer her lunch some time.

Morgan chattered excitedly, circling a few traits they'd predicted, underlining what they needed to confirm, and for the first time that meeting, Prentiss spoke up, an agent Jason hadn't quite gotten used to yet, standing to pin a picture behind the board so she could highlight something. Jason took this opportunity to stand up as well, sliding into the seat beside JJ.

"You were going to say something earlier," he noted.

"... When, Sir?" she murmured in response, tucking her ankles further under her seat and placing her pen on the desk as she sat up, engaged.

"When Reid mentioned the unsub's hands. When he mentioned the possibility of him being a pianist."

JJ's face lit up. "There was a classical CD that didn't belong to the victim but had been playing long enough for the stereo to turn itself off," she said, JJ turned her head, raising her hand to flick her fingers in Spencer's peripherals, grinning when it got his attention. She repeated her realization, loud enough for the team to hear, and Prentiss bounced onto her toes as if she'd forgotten, as well.

"Wait," Reid paused, concerned, "how do you know it didn't belong to the victim, and that the stereo wasn't just... off?"

"Because there was no CD case," Prentiss replied, clearly seeking Reid's approval.

"What about an unmarked sleeve? Piracy is common. Cases get lost." 

"Nothing. We didn't want to mention anything without first asking the victim's family what they knew of her musical preferences."

"It's an awkward thing to ask a grieving family," JJ added, looking to Jason. "We wanted to seek your council first."

"Go," Jason nodded, and JJ stood up immediately, heels clicking as she moved to Prentiss' side, the sound multiplying into a steady stampede of two as they both set off.

"So our rapist may like having a soundtrack," Hotchner mused, rolling backwards a few inches. This, apparently, had been getting on Reid's nerves for the majority of the meeting, because he stood up, swiftly dragging his chair to sit beside the SSA, jamming the toe of his shoe against a wheel and effectively wedging Aaron's cabinet in place. Hotch looked mildly offended, looking confusedly behind him to survey the extent of his restraint.

"Makes sense," Derek reasoned, though his face had a darker expression. His lip was almost curled. "Doesn't everybody like music when they get it on?"

Spencer silently handed Hotch his rubber band, and the man, at a loss for words, accepted the gift. He held the broken band with a thumb and forefinger on each end, and it simply proved that acceptance was a faster alternative to insisting he wasn't fidgety. He crossed a leg over his knee, self conscious for having irked  _Reid,_ a generally easy going person.

"I wish I'd thought to ask JJ what the CD _was,"_ Spencer sighed, as if Prentiss hadn't contributed to the find at all. "She didn't bring it in because there's a fine line between collecting evidence and accidental thievery. That may just be a family member's CD."

"Knowing he's more into Chopin than Mozart won't exactly help us catch him," Derek said, and Spencer fixed him with a look.

"Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of asking her whether it's even  _from_ the era of Chopin and not modern 'classical' music. There are still composers actively releasing music into the orchestral world, don't even get me _started_ on how many budding pianists are cropping up all over the Internet. Classical music is a relatively old idea-"

"Hence the genre's chosen title."

"- but it's by no means died out." Having a seemingly infinite supply, Spencer had leaned to the side, steadying himself on Hotch's cabinet as he stretched, plucking another broken rubber band out of the pencil holder on his desk. Jason could've sworn he was only twirling it so Hotchner could watch and imitate. Hotch hadn't given in just yet.

"So you're sayin' we might be looking for someone active in a musical community?"

"If and _only_ if the CD JJ and Prentiss found didn't belong to the victim," Hotchner injected. "We'll of course have it dusted for prints regardless of origin, because if it is hers, where's the sleeve?"

"A trophy, perhaps?" Jason asked, slowly filling his lungs, unconvinced. As Reid had declared, cases go missing.

"A bit of an odd souvenir, don't you think? I'd prefer to return to a less abstract level of thinking. While we're worrying about hypothetical music preferences, another girl could be suffocating." Hotch was twirling the rubber band absently now, wrist resting on his knee. Jason wondered if he even realized he was doing it.

"Let's go back to genital mutilation," Reid suggested quietly.

"Something usually thought to be carried out by women," Morgan agreed solemnly, finding it hard to look at the picture Emily had pinned for all to see. "If not for the DNA found in the body, I'd have sworn we were looking at a femme fatale. She's _sewn up_  like a _purse."_ This was why they had ruled out 'small hands'; the stitch work was sloppy, unpracticed and uneven.

"Maybe this was a duo?"

"No, I don't think it was a duo. Hotch?"

He glanced at Gideon before he replied to him, eyes going back to the board with a determination where the others had displayed discomfort. He was wildly uncomfortable, but the more he forced himself to see, the more determined he became to catch the son of a bitch that did this. He sucked in a sharp breath.

"I'm ready to present when JJ and Prentiss return," he revealed on the exhale, discreetly slipping the rubber band into his breast pocket. Jason nodded, and so it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all should lmk if you want this to be Hotchreid because. [eyes emoji] I haven't written something I genuinely liked since about 2012 and I'm not sure I want my first fic to be shippy. Maybe just undertones?


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